A new website has been launched http://www.legislation.gov.uk. This website hopes (in time) to provide fully revised versions of legislation which can be a difficult to obtain without spending large amounts of money on subscription based services (like we do).
The main advantage to the previous websites providing legislation is that it was difficult to know whether it had been changed and if so was the legislation being read the current version or the old version? However, this appears to be fixed with this site by having a red box appear making you aware that there have been changes which have not yet been implemented. Clicking the more button then reveals a list of the changes to be implemented and a link to the instrument making the changes. At least therefore for now, you can manually read the changes and incorporate them yourself. Over time, hopefully they will make all necessary amendments accordingly.
This is certainly a step forward in obtaining fully revised versions of legislation. The site also seems to have some excellent printing options including PDF creation.
It was running very slow tonight whilst doing some quick tests but this is no doubt because it has just launched and there are lots of curious people doing similar tests to me!
What legislation is held on legislation.gov.uk?
Legislation.gov.uk carries most (but not all) types of legislation and their accompanying explanatory documents. For a full list of legislation types held on legislation.gov.uk see the Browse Legislation section.
- All legislation from 1988 – present day is available on this site
- There are no secondary legislation items (e.g Statutory Instruments) available before 1988 as they are not available in a web-publishable format.
- Most pre-1988 primary legislation is available on this site going back to 1267
